8 August 2023
New Wave. New Attitude.
There’s a new(ish) wave of current/modern bands that have really caught RH’s attention. That list would include Sleep Token, Lorna Shore, Bad Omens, In This Moment, Falling In Reverse, Motionless in White and Asking Alexandria.
What we admire about them is how they’ve found success on their own terms, independently from the industry and tastemakers. This was mainly down to fans sharing their music on TikTok. Road Hounds certainly believes in putting the power back into the hands of the fans and the artist. They all demonsrate a solid progression with each album growing in imagination and without compromise. Respect.
Asking Alexandria are a British metalcore band that survived many lineup changes, but with founder and guitarist Ben Bruce always at the helm.
On 2017’s self titled album the band reintroduced themselves to model modern frontman Danny Worsnop to deliver their most polished effort to date. It contains several powerful anthems as well as some new vocal directions.
On “Into the Fire” (co-produced by Korn’s Jonathan Davis), the band reminds listeners that they can still pummel with brutality, combining soaring choruses with Worsnop’s blood-curdling bellows. “Eve” is the closest they come to old-fashioned viciousness, an epic explosion of demonic wails and chugging riffs. “
Asking Alexandria is a worthy return from the classic lineup, retaining the best aspects of its past and taking steps into its future.
Falling In Reverse are a Nevada-based post-hardcore band formed by ex-Escape the Fate frontman Ronnie Radke.
On 2017’s Coming Home, the band made another shift in trajectory. Taking the template from their metalcore debut and the production flourishes from Just Like You, album number four strikes a solid balance. Less brutal than Motionless in White and more melodic like Hands Like Houses, they succeed in creating an exciting blend of styles that prevents the collection from ever stagnanting.
A highly listenable and emotive album, layering a wall of guitars, pounding drums, atmospheric textures, and a decent mix of bloody screaming and gang choruses. Radke lets it all out, encouraging listeners to feel the same cathartic release. Well worth a listen.
Sleep Token are an enigmatic British band who combine post-rock, post-classical, and post-metal tropes with soulful vocals into a blend that sounds like nothing else.
2023 was the year for Sleep Token became very popular, very quickly, thanks to their third record Take Me Back to Eden. Part-metal, part-R&B, all-chaotic.
Over the course of a single song, the band can zip from doomy downtuned metal riffs to choruses with passionate falsetto R&B crooning, then straight to a technical breakdown somewhere between djent and prog metal. Sections of pummeling drums and guitars are followed by fantastical synths or thick, sleazy funk grooves – all within the same song. Yeah.
Singer Vessel showcases an incredible range, the surrounding instrumentation juxtaposes near-djent wildness, capturing just how inventive, wide-ranging and thoroughly effective Sleep Token can be.
Lorna Shore are a punishing deathcore unit based out of Warren County, New Jersey. Currently they are the fastest-rising deathcore band in the world and are a band that any modern music fan needs to know about.
This status is thanks in part to modern production, creating a heavier, sleeker and more musically dynamic sound. New singer Will Ramos’ animalistic snorts and ghoulish shrieks also add to the group’s signature mix of neck-snapping breakdowns, twisted riffage and symphonic black-metal ambiance.
On 2022’s Pain Remains LP, the band lean hard into the band’s symphonic metal tendencies and deliver a compelling listen.
Based in Los Angeles, In This Moment is a goth-metal group with metalcore roots.
Ritual, their sixth studio long-player, opens appropriately with an evocative soundscape filled with thunderclaps, ghostly incantations, air raid sirens, and tribal drumming, portending an explosive, arena-sized doom anthem.
“Oh Lord” proves once again that singer Maria Brink possesses one of the most powerful and compelling voices in the modern rock genre. Follow-up “Black Wedding” pairs Brink with the metal god himself, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, and the two lay waste to a fun, propulsive, and campy duet. An icy and operatic version of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” plays to the band’s penchant for melodrama, as does the bold and dark, though ultimately hope-driven closer “Lay Down Your Gun.”
It’s the band’s leanest set of material to date and its moody charms are administered with both muscle and grace.
Motionless in White create dramatic and brooding gothic metalcore and are from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
On 2014’s Reincarnate we find the band settling into the more industrial sound they started transitioning into with Infamous. On it they deliver a more assured and consistent performance. Blending the dark and seedy edge of Marilyn Manson with a driving, melodic edge, the album effortlessly combines the styles of the band’s previous efforts, creating an explosive and massive sound.
Songs like “Reincarnate” and “Dark Passenger” are packed floor to ceiling with monstrous guitars, twisting synth lines, and explosive drumming, giving the music a density that would be overwhelming without Motionless in White’s knack for melody.
Reincarnate features some solid collaborations, with Cradle of Filth’s Dani Filth dropping by on “Puppets 3 (The Grand Finale)” and In This Moment’s Maria Brink lending her vocals to “Contemptress.”
With so much confidence and gothic swagger, it’s hard not to be entertained by this album.Bad Omens are a Los Angeles metalcore band who trade in punishing breakdowns and anthemic choruses that evoke contemporaries like Bring Me the Horizon.Their eponymous debut hit the Billboard rock, hard rock, independent, and Heatseekers album charts upon release in 2016. The group hit all the same charts again with 2019’s Finding God Before God Finds Me, which climbed to number seven on the hard rock list. Its singles “Limits” and “Never Know” kept Bad Omens in the Top 30 of the Mainstream Rock Airplay for several months in 2020 and 2021.
Following a forced break from touring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they returned with the triumphant and uncompromising The Death of Peace of Mind in 2022.
We’ve assembled a playlist for you too. Enjoy.